


Dean Winchester Does Not (Usually) Pray

by celestialdisturbances



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Complete, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Kissing, M/M, No Smut, Slow Build, Soulmates, Souls, Wing Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-25
Updated: 2014-06-28
Packaged: 2018-02-06 03:29:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1842685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celestialdisturbances/pseuds/celestialdisturbances
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean Winchester prays to Castiel and is surprised by the outcome.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prayer

"Okay. I hear you," Dean says to Sam for what feels like the billionth time. The bourbon in Dean’s hand sloshes around as his fist clenches around the glass, threatening to shatter it.

He ducks out of Bobby’s living room and heads out to be with the cars. These cars are sometimes organ donors for Baby, when Dean gets desperate. Bobby used to work on these cars. The garage used to actually take in new cars and fix them up before reselling them. Now these beat up vehicles were just collecting dust.

Dean balls up his hand and lets his fist bounce against the hood of a shitty little car. A ‘98 Toyota. Nothing worth Dean’s time, but he opens the dented passenger side door and slides into the car. Coffee is the first scent Dean registers, then the metallic scent of blood appears at the edge of Dean’s senses. He sighs and balances his drink on his knee, then runs his hand over his mouth and shakes his head, as though this would help reorganize his thoughts.

"Incoming call from Dean," he says under his breath.

Something about praying feels out of place to Dean, but something about Cas feels very familiar, so he prays anyway.

"Here’s hoping you haven’t put me on mute by now."

Dean picks up his glass again and finishes off what remained. The liquor means almost nothing to him. He usually drank until the liquor replaced the blood in his veins, and then he had a bit more for good measure. Not that it helped as much as he needed to be helped. No amount of alcohol could diminish the guilt...

He glances around the Toyota and thinks of Bobby. Dean knew Bobby well, and so he's not surprised when he dug out a bottle with a good fifth of whiskey left. He laughs a little to himself and considers leaving the bottle undrunk. The thought passes quickly, and he is soon off to downing that bottle, too. Unlike most, he didn’t have to worry about the damage all the alcohol would inevitably cause. He wouldn’t live that long. Hunters rarely do.

"Cas?" Hunters die. They die suddenly. They die regardless of whether or not they have said all that they have ever wanted to say, done everything they’ve ever wanted to do. Hunters had to speak while they had the chance, they do what they must. They had intense lives, because they never knew when it will all end.

"Cas - When you get the chance…" No. "Cas I need you, my feathered friend, to fly south for a few." Dean pauses, feeling steadily more ridiculous and anxious. It had been months since Cas had answered to Dean’s prayers, probably because Dean did not make a habit of praying unless he needed Cas. At that moment, Dean only wanted Cas. He wants to explain idioms and watch Cas’ eyebrows lace together in confusion, his head cocking to one side. Dean wants to show movies to Cas and muss up Cas’s hair, like how it used to be when the two of them first met. Cas used to have perpetual sex hair. Dean misses the sex hair.

Dean drink and listens for the sound of rustling feathers, but no such noise was forthcoming. Dean drinks again and bows his head. “Come on, man.”


	2. Wings

Dean first hears the folding and unfolding of wings. Then, "Hello, Dean." The light smell of Irish Spring follows shortly after. Dean had always wondered, if maybe Cas had a "Return to Factory Settings" button somewhere in the vessel that allowed for the trench coat to always be repaired and the smell of soap to hang in the air around him. There seemed to be no other logical explanation.

"Cas." The angel's wings are visible, unfolding and taking up all of the space in the small car. The wings are dark grey, the color of iron, not the color Dean had been expecting.

In fact, Sam and Dean had once talked about what Cas's wings might look like. Sam suspected they were a quarter mile across and golden in color. He figured angels had to bear some resemblance to the paintings, and maybe that resemblance was in the wings. Initially, Dean has scoffed at Sam's notion, but upon realizing that he had no better ideas, he hung his head and decided not to offer up the image he had concocted in his own private thoughts.

Dean had thought the wings would be dark, near black, like Castiel's hair. He doesn't know why he expected the feathers to match the vessel's hair, but that was always what he had imagined. On nights when Dean's mind really wandered, he would think about what the wings would feel like. Dean had imagined them thick and strong, protective. He hadn't imagined them looking like this.

"Castiel," Dean says in awe.

"You haven't called me by my full name in a long time," Cas says. He sounds tired, which was understandable. He is losing his war. His eyes are looking about, not quite absorbing the scene, but gathering the basics. He recognizes Dean, but distantly. 

"That's your name, isn't it?"

"Yes, my angel name. But I've grown accustomed to my human name as well. Somehow, it feels... fitting to go by an abbreviation of an angel name," Cas explains. Dean wonders if he feels like an abbreviation of an angel, but does not voice this concern. And, yet, he can faintly see Cas nodding in agreement, or else Dean's whole world is sort of bobbing up and down in the ebb and flow of alcohol.

Dean just keeps staring. He clears his throat as if to speak on several occasions, but never quite makes an attempt to actually do so. He shifts uncomfortably as Cas's right wing settles. It wraps behind Dean's seat and the very tip of it rests close to the dashboard, leaving Dean completely surrounded.

"You asked to see me?"

"Why do they look like that?" There are patches of raw flesh.

"The wings?"

Dean nods. His hand reaches out to stroke one of the battered wings, but hesitates at the halfway point then falls back into his lap.

"You can't hurt them any more than they have been hurt," Cas says. He twitches the wing closest to Dean so that the edges of the feathers graze his arm. They feel just like ordinary wing feathers. Like those of a bird. Not downy and soft, but sleek and wiry.

"They didn't always look like that," Dean says, recalling the night that he first met Cas. The lights had sparked and Dean swore he saw the silhouette of thick, healthy wings. "Are the feathers falling out?" 


	3. Souls

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hiya kiddos.  
> For your own safety and well being, I ask that you proceed into this chapter with caution as it may be the tiniest bit graphic. Make sure you've read the tags for this fanfic and that you're prepared to face such topics.  
> Have a lovely evening.

Cas opens his mouth, meets Dean's gaze, then turns away. For a moment, he watches movement from within Bobby's house. He can see Sam's soul moving around in the kitchen. Although the look of souls is beyond human comprehension, Cas could venture to describe Sam's as a cloud of light brown dust that surrounds and moves in and out of his body. Sam's soul is unlike Dean's. Dean's stays within his body and is of an amber color, as if his body is filled almost to the top with Drambuie. 

Cas has always been amused by that; although the brothers are soulmates, their souls are neither alike in texture, color, or attitude. While Sam's reaches out to other people in order to mingle with their souls and seems unbothered by any sort of emotional stimulus, Dean's soul is quite contained and whenever Dean gets emotional, his soul sloshes around a bit. Dean's soul is much more restless, probably because of the way Dean clings to it, holding it always inside of him.

Finally, the angel turns back to face Dean, who has ceased looking at Cas with a perplexed expression, and has resumed staring wide-eyed at the wings. 

Dean strokes along the top of the wing. His touch is cautious and light at first, but soon becomes more firm, when he realizes that Cas's wing is leaning toward him, in the same way that Dean leans in whenever someone affectionately cups his cheek, as Anna and Jo once did.

"No," Cas says. "They're not falling out. They're being ripped out."

Dean does not tear his eyes from the wing. "Who would do that?"

Cas looks at his own wings, at the stains of blood on the grey feathers, and remembers ripping out feathers one by one, clawing them out of the flesh of his wings, throwing all of his energy into such destruction. This is not what angels were made for. They were meant to create, to give, to do God's bidding, to fight for righteousness, to heal. 

Cas, in a moment of pure humanity, a moment of intense emotion, emotions he was programed not to have, had done this. He had destroyed his gift from God. For a moment, he was no angel. He tore and scratched and clawed and dug at his wings. His wings that were once so beautiful.

Wings that Dean had thought were beautiful. Cas didn't mean to, but sometimes, he could overhear Dean's thoughts. Humans are loud creatures. They project their thoughts sometimes, especially when they most don't want those thoughts to be heard. It remains a flaw in their creation. A flaw that Cas loved very much, because sometimes he would catch a word or phrase of Dean Winchester's thoughts, and sometimes, they were of Cas.

Most of the time, of course, they were about a case or about Sam, but sometimes, when Dean was sitting in cramped cars in abandoned garages with a set of broken angel wings practically draped across him, his thoughts would be about how beautiful Cas's wings are.

Cas can briefly forget about his losing war when thoughts like those cross Dean's mind.


	4. Harm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello dears, welcome to chapter four.  
> For your own safety and well being, I ask that you proceed into this chapter with caution as it may be the tiniest bit graphic. Make sure you've read the tags for this fanfic and that you're prepared to face such topics.  
> Hope you're all doing well, my darlings.  
> 

"I did," Cas says matter-of-factly.

Dean does not turn and gape at Cas, as expected. His hand just continues to stoke soothingly at Cas's wing. He even leans back into the wing a bit, so part of it rests on his shoulder and his face is almost leaning up against it.

He tips his head so that he can meet the angel's eyes.

"Why?" Dean's voice is curious where it should be filled with anger or accusations.

"I don't feel like an angel anymore." Cas remembers the hurt that he experienced on the first night that his despair and hopelessness caused him to turn on himself. He remembers how much blood there had been. It has surprised him, how much damage a few dozen feathers could do. Other angels had offered to heal him, but something felt right about the ache that now came with flying, with the itch of healing skin.

"Okay. What does that mean, exactly?"

"It means... It means I can feel things. Emotions, doubt, pain. I don't know what's happening." His eyes flicker towards Dean's, asking him to understand. "It's like my grace has sprung a leak and humanity is filling in the extra space."

Dean looks empathetic. He inches his hand further along Cas's wing, closer to his vessel's shoulder. His shoulder. Cas is so used to this body it feel like it was his. This body matters to him. He's fond of it. Always repairs it rather than just finding a new one.

"It hurts," Cas admits.

Dean nods. "It hurts like hell, Cassie." 

The nickname feels weird on his lips. Especially since he knew a Cassie in what feels like another lifetime. But 'Castiel' is his angel name, 'Cas' is his human name, and maybe 'Cassie' can be his this-moment-name, because Dean wants to remember this moment. It feels important even as it's happening, and moments like that are only supposed to come once or twice in a lifetime. Dean's had quite a few. The apocalypse being the easiest to call to mind. Most of the time, though, it takes retrospect to realize the weight of a moment.

"Does it?" Cas is genuinely curious. Sure, he'd been to hell, back when pain did not feel quite like this, when he was just another soldier in the line up, blindly following orders. Following them right into this mess.

Dean's hands are still wandering up the length of Cas's wing. The closer Dean's hand got, the warmer the wing was. His hand lingered at this one particularly nasty gash in the angel's wing. When he lightly grazes the wound with his fingertips, Cas flinches away, giving a small, almost unnoticeable hiss of pain. "Hell hurt like this." Dean is slow with his words, weighing them on his tongue, making sure they feel right before letting them go. He wants to help Castiel. "Like how pulling out your own feathers feels. Like too many feelings too close to the surface. It's every sort of pain imaginable, and I think you understand that better now."

He presses his palm to Cas's wing, thinking maybe that he could heal Cas the way Cas had healed him time and time again. When he pulls his palm away, the raw skin is still there, still red and angry looking.

"I'm sorry that you understand."

Cas shudders. "Yeah, me too."

Dean's thoughts are quite loud again as he thinks to himself that Cas's wings are still beautiful, and that they will heal, and that he wishes things were different, that he could ease the angel's suffering.

They sit in silence for a moment, only able to hear the sound of Dean's fingers against angel wings and Dean's heart beating faster and faster. Dean then absently claps his hand on Cas's shoulder and squeezes it once. He does not think much of the gesture, but Cas registers it as comfort. He thinks it's strange, being comforted. Nothing is resolved, nothing is even improved, but for some reason, Cas feels a little lighter now.


	5. Admit

Dean does not immediately remove his hand from Cas's shoulder. When he realizes how long it has been sitting there, he blushes and lowers it back into his lap, wringing his hands nervously. His soul twitches within him.

Cas can feel Sam's soul hovering nearby. It has moved closer to Dean's over the time they've been sitting in the Toyota. It is almost as if Sam's soul is reaching out to Dean's because they have been apart for a little while now. Cas is curious as to how the two of them ever lived apart. He cannot decide which is worse, the idea that when the brothers were separated Dean's soul was very active, or very stagnant.

He wonders if Sam can see him and Dean sitting in the car. Were Cas's wings blocking the view? Were they covered by darkness? Or were they sitting right in plain view, for Sam to see them leaning in toward one another the way lovers do? Cas cannot tell if he wants Sam to notice them or not.

"Cas?" Dean says after a long time.

"Yes, Dean?"

The space between the hunter and the angel is quickly closing as Dean leans in real close to Cas. It reminds Cas of a conversation he and Dean had once had regarding personal space, but neither of them seem to mind all of a sudden.

Cas feels Sam's soul politely withdraw, not dejectedly, though. More as if it is giving Dean permission, giving him space. Space that Cas certainly wasn't providing. Cas and Dean are mere inches apart now.

They pause for a moment, just breathing the same air. Dean's lips are parted slightly and his eyes are wide and searching for something, though they get distracted often and flit down to stare at Cas's lips. The silence is not uncomfortable, just very tense, so quiet that Cas feels that if he moves at all the air will shatter around him. He feels frozen in time and it is exhausting. After a few beats, Cas grows a little impatient and just leans the remaining inch and a half so his lips are just touching Dean's.

Dean will never admit to it, but he likes that Cas closes the gap. He likes that the angel kisses him first. He likes that, for once, there is no pressure on him. He can just be.

Cas starts out shy, kissing like a chaste, fifteen year old virgin, but he is not slow and gentle for long. He is rough with his hands, pulling at Dean and cupping his hand around Deans jaw without any tenderness. He bites and moves in quick, sudden bursts. It's not what Dean is used to, it's even a little awkward, with the center console in their way and there just not being enough space in the small car and Dean knowing that Cas has kissed so few people that he could count it on one hand.

Dean will never admit to it, but he likes the way Cas kisses him.


	6. Remember

Dean is the first to break away. He leans back into his own space and clears his throat. "Uh.. Sammy--Sammy might be wondering where I've run off to." He seems uncomfortable.

Cad nods once and his voice and posture and general way of being are all Reset to Factory Settings. He looks stoic, and a little like he is awaiting orders. "Why did you call me, Dean?"

Dean feels disheartened by the change in tone, but he tries not to show it. He rubs the back of his neck, looks sideways at Cas, and says, "It was nothing, Cas. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to take you from your, uh, responsibilities. It, uh, doesnmatter." He then looks down at his hands. 

Cas finds himself struggling to keep up with the human emotions Dean is flitting between, like the way one would flip through vinyls in a record store. Dean's soul is moving. Cas tries to catch one of Dean's thoughts. He just needs a word, a phrase, but all he can read off of Dean is conflict. He decides to try something.

"I can't go back just yet. Please, Dean, just stay with me a little longer. Really, you'd be doing me a favor."

"Yeah?" A blush appears across Dean's freckled cheeks. His eyes meet Cas's for a moment, before darting back to the wings.

Cas nods.

Dean tries to smooth out one of Cas's feathers that is lying askew alongside a tear in the flesh. Cas's back arches off the driver's seat and he winces a little, biting his lip to keep from crying out.

"Sorry," Dean mutters.

"Don't be. My fault," Cas says through clenched teeth.

Dean does not respond immediately. He is thinking about who should be to blame for the state of Cas's wings. "Not anybody's fault. You're just having trouble adapting," Dean says. "You just need to relax."

Cas nods as if he understands. He doesn't, of course. So, instead, he scoots to the right-most edge of his seat. Dean hesitates for a beat. Cas is about as subtle about what he wants as a toddler who screams and points until mommy gives him his sippy cup. Dean obliges and kisses Cas again.

There's a lot of movement involved, between Dean's soul and Cas's wandering hands.

Over his shirt but under the trench coat and navy suit jacket, Dean runs a knuckle down Cas's spine and then massages the spot where the angel's wings meet his back. He breathes in the smell of Irish Spring as they kiss.

Cas tugs at Dean's shirt, dipping his fingers below the collar to run them along the warm skin of Dean's neck and collarbones.

At one point, Cas's hand comes to rest on Dean's shoulder, in the same spot where his handprint used to be seared into Dean's skin. He lines his hand up with where the mark should be. The moment lasts an age, but soon Cas moves his hand in order to play with the bottom of Dean's t-shirt. His hands occasionally graze Dean's stomach, although Dean tends to shift away a little when that happens. Sometimes Dean even sits up straighter and sucks in his stomach to avoid Cas's touch. Cas is both amused and taken aback by the fact that this near-fearless, confident hunter is being so... insecure. It's all very human.

This time it is Cas who disentangles first, to throw a curious glance at Dean, who misreads the look and says, "it's been a while since I got drunk and made out with a guy." He then kinda laughs. "Drank so much I'm not sure I'll remember much tomorrow." His voice is light and joking, but Cas narrows his eyes in a serious manner.

He lifts two fingers in the general direction of Dean's temple. "You don't have to remember, if you'd rather not," Cas offers.

"No, no," Dean says, waving away Cas's hand. "I, uh, I want to remember, I think."

He looks bashful, but holds Cas's gaze, and for the third time that night, they both lean in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm actually a little sad that this fic is over. Well, I hope y'all liked it. Thanks for sticking with it until the end here. Have a good night!


End file.
